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THE 
HARVARD COMMISSION 

ON 

WESTERN HISTORY 



CHARLES ELLIOTT PERKINS 
FOUNDATION 




HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 

1912 



COMMISSION 

Archibald C. Coolidge, Cambridge, Mass. 

Andrew McFarland Davis, Chairman, Cam- 
bridge, Mass. 

Horace Davis, San Francisco, Cal. 

Charles G. Dawes, Chicago, 111. 

Frederic A. Delano, Chicago, 111. 

Grenville M. Dodge, Council Bluffs, la. 

Howard Elliott, St. Paul, Minn. 

Charles Moore, Detroit, Mich. 

Frederi(^J, Turner, Cambridge, Mass. 

Edgar H. Wells, Secretary, Harvard Uni- 
versity Library, Cambridge, Mass. 



Communications concerning the work of the Commission, 
and material, whether printed or documentary, may be sent 
to the Secretary. 

Gift 
^^^•^0 1CB29 



^ The Harvard Commission on 
Western History 

(Reprinted from the Harvard Alumni Bull etin } 

The Corporation has established the^ 
Harvard Commission on Western History 
on the terms suggested in a letter, dated 
January 27, 1912, which reads in part as 
follows : 

"In the last few years the Department 
of History, the College Library, the Al- 
umni Association, and a number of 
friends of the College have been making a 
strong effort to build up a great collection 
on the history and development of the 
West, broadly interpreted. We have as 
a teacher of Western History the best 
known authority on the subject, and his 
appointment to Harvard has excited gen- 
eral satisfaction and enthusiasm among a 
number of Western graduates. We are 
also receiving from Mrs. William Hooper,, 
in memory of her father, the late Charles; 
Elliott Perkins, of Burlington, Iowa, a, 
considerable annual sum for the purchase 
of books dealing with the West, and we 
hope in course of time to build up such 
a collection on this 'subject' that Harvard 



will be generally regarded as the best 
place in this country for the study of 
Western History. We can only accomplish 
the purpose in view, however, if we have 
the cooperation of a number of people in 
the West who can interest themselves in 
the matter and pick up for us on the spot 
various important items of local his- 
tory and literature in manuscripts or in 
^vhatever form they may appear. There 
is a great deal that may be accomplished 
in this way, but it can only be done by 
systematic effort reaching a large terri- 
tory and many people. 

"It is respectfully urged, therefore, 
that the Corporation appoint a commis- 
sion to be kndwn as the Harvard Commis- 
sion on Western History, the Charles El- 
liott Perkins Foundation, and appoint the 
following members thereto: A. McF. 
Davis, '55, of Cambridge, chairman; 
Horace Davis, '49, of San Francisco; 
'-General Grenville M. Dodge, of Council 
Bluffs; Mr. Charles G. Dawes, of Chicago: 
^Charles Moore, '78, of Detroit; Howard 
Elliott, '81, of St. Paul; F. A. Delano, 
"'85, of Chicago; Professor F. J. Turner; 
Professor A. C. Coolidge, '87; and E. H. 
Wells, '97." 

The purpose of this Foundation is to 



establish, at the most ancient University 
of America, a monument to the West and 
to its importance both past, present and 
future in shaping the character and the 
destinies of this country. If the Founda- 
tion fulfils the conception of the founder 
and of the Commission, it will aid in col- 
lecting material which will in the future 
make possible adequate study of the ful- 
filment of the great faith of the East in the 
"West from the early decades of the 
nineteenth century on; and it will be a 
place where all students of American His- 
tory will find gathered together for con- 
venient use a great mass of books, pam- 
phlets, newspapers, and manuscript mater- 
ial showing the embodiment of this faith 
in the growth of the West. There will thus 
be collected in Harvard University Li- 
brary, as a single storehouse, the means 
necessary for defining the part played in 
the making of the West by the foresight 
of Eastern men in the past, and at the 
same time of the growth of a new Ameri- 
ca west of the Alleghenies in which the 
ideals of all parts of the East have been 
brought together and reshaped by set- 
tlers not only from the East but from 
the best of the races of Europe. 

The scope of the plan is large. It aims 



to collect all the material possible, books, 
pamphlets, newspapers, reports of socie- 
ties or railroads or other business con- 
cerns, and manuscript material whether 
letters, old accounts or business reports. 
Such collections would not only exploit 
the development of the "West, but also 
make it possible to trace out more exactly 
and comprehensively the many ways in 
which the East has participated in the 
building up of the West. 

Even as early as the early decades of 
the nineteenth century the East had a 
great and enthusiastic faith in the possi- 
bilities of the West and in the part which 
it would play in the Nation before the end 
of the century. This faith was shown in 
many ways. Besides the pouring out of 
capital and of large individual gifts there 
were various societies founded in the first 
half of the nineteenth century to pro- 
mote education in the West, which drew 
largely on the funds of Eastern men and 
women who had a vision of the future in 
the great states beyond the AUeghenies. 
They helped in the founding and support 
of western colleges and seminaries and 
of public schools. Besides these contri- 
butions for the support of education and 
religion, there was a great investment of 



capital in many enterprises in the West. 
The railroads made possible the founda- 
tion of the new states, and great lines like 
the C. B. & Q. and the Atchison, Topeka 
and Santa Fe were founded and financed 
by Eastern capital, largely contributed by 
great numbers of people who invested 
their savings in the bonds and stock of 
such railroads. Thus, it was not merely 
the great capitalists but the people of 
moderate means who contributed their 
share toward the development of the 
Western country. 

In order to make it possible to write 
the history of the growth of this great 
new country of the West, with its strong 
individuality and its high level of educa- 
tion and morals, it is necessary to collect 
an enormous mass of material. The main 
interest in the West has not been in its 
historical episodes, but in the development 
of society. This fact makes the task of 
writing the history more difficult. It is 
none the less striking and romantic, how- 
ever, to a historian who has the eye to 
see things in the large way; but this ca- 
pacity to see the large outlines must be 
supported by the exact knowledge of an 
enormous mass of small facts, and the 
gathering of many scholars to work on 



the material. To make this study possi- 
ble, then, is the aim of this Foundation. 
If there can be gathered together the 
great quantities of books, pamphlets, news- 
papers and manuscript material which 
are necessary, the history of the United 
States as a whole can be written with 
adequate sources. 

To carry out this purpose it has seemed 
wise to establish this Commission on 
Western History composed of men whose 
knowledge of the West and whose posi- 
tion will be a guarantee of the largeness 
of the aim and the value of the object to 
be achieved. Of members of the Com- 
mission, Andrew McFarland Davis, the 
chairman, as a young man helped in the 
survey for one of the first railroads in 
Wisconsin and afterwards lived in Cali- 
fornia for several years. He has written 
on the West and on Canadian affairs in 
Winsor's Narrative and Critical History 
of America. His special subject has been 
the history of banking and currency in 
the United States. His brother, Horace 
Davis, '49, of San Francisco, was at one 
time president of the University of Cali- 
fornia and is now the senior trustee of 
the Leland Stanford, Jr., University. 
General Grenville M. Dodge, of Council 



Bluffs, is the only surviving general of 
the Civil War, on the Northern side at 
least, who had an independent command. 
He was chief engineer of the Union Pa- 
cific Railroad from 1866 to 1870 and chief 
engineer of the Texas and Pacific Railway 
from 1871 to 1881 ; he was president of 
the President's commission to inquire inta 
the management of the war with Spain 
and was commander-in-chief of the Mili- 
tary Order of the Loyal Legion in 1907- 
8. Charles G. Dawes, now president of 
the Central Trust Company of Illinois in 
Chicago, was comptroller of the currency 
1897-1902. Howard Elliott, '81, is presi- 
dent of the Northern Pacific Railway, a 
railway which is still carrying on the 
process of opening up the further regions 
of the West and filling them with settlers. 
F. A. Delano, '85, is president of the Wa- 
bash Railroad, which traverses a great 
portion of the nearer West. Both Elliott 
and Delano were trained under Mr. Per- 
kins, in whose memory the Foundation is 
named. Professor F. J. Turner, formerly 
of the University of Wisconsin, is recog- 
nized as the leading authority on the his- 
tory of the West. Prfessor A. C. Cool- 
idge, '87, is Director of the University 
Library. E. H. Wells, '97, is General Sec- 



retary of The Harvard Alumni Associa- 
tion. 

There is already at Cambridge, or 
within practicable reach of it, one of the 
largest collections to be found anywhere 
of material for the study of the history of 
America. The College library has an al- 
most unequalled collection of the national 
documents; it has great masses of material 
on the anti-slavery movement which spread 
so largely in the West ; it has its Parkman 
collection which includes maps and books 
used by Mr. Parkman for his great series 
of histories; it has the Arthur Lee manu- 
scripts, the Gage manuscripts and Sparks 
manuscripts, with much unpublished ma- 
terial; it has an exceedingly strong col- 
lection of maps, and early newspapers, 
and the material used by Justin Winsor 
for his great histories. It is therefore 
in American History undoubtedly the 
strongest university library in the coun- 
try. Besides these collections in the Col- 
lege library, there is the Law School li- 
bra;:'y which has an unequalled collection 
of reports and statutes of the various 
states, and in the Divinity School library 
there are great quantities of early church 
material. 

Then in Boston, there are the coUec- 

10 



lions of the Massachusetts Historical So- 
<?iety and of the New England Genealogi- 
cal Society and the special collections of 
the Boston Athenaeum and of the Boston 
Public Library. At Worcester, only an 
hour away, there is the Library of the 
American Antiquarian Society which is 
especially strong in early newspapers. At 
Providence, an hour away in another di- 
rection, is the John Carter Brown Li- 
brary which is unequalled in early and 
rare Americana. No other single univer- 
sity in the country affords such facilities 
for the study of American History. 

Thus it is aimed to maintain at Harvard 
an eastern centre where undergraduates 
and advanced scholars can study the West, 
the part it has played in American life, 
and the experiences and ideals that have 
accompanied the march of the American 
people into the new lands. This, it is be- 
lieved, will conduce to a more adequate 
conception of America in general, and of 
the forces of national development. 



The establishment of the Commission 
on Western History which is announced in 
this number of the Bulletin has high 
promise in various ways. To begin with, 
the Commission will strengthen the schol- 

11 



arly resources of the University in a sub- 
ject where it is part of the tradition of 
Harvard to be strong. We have already 
great collections of materials in American 
history; and when these are increased by 
a mass of material for the special study of 
the West they may easily become unsur- 
passed and perhaps unsurpassable. More- 
over, such a collection will increase the 
usefulness of the University to scholars in 
other institutions by bringing under a 
single roof material which will be at the 
service of all scholars. The fact noted on 
another page that 1210 volumes from our 
collection of historical sources were loaned 
to scholars outside the University in a 
single year shows the possibilities of this 
service. A large collection of books, 
pamphlets, newspapers and manuscripts 
showing the growth of the great states be- 
yond the Alleghenies will be a boon to 
every earnest delver in American history. 
Even more stimulating to the imagina- 
tion, however, are the possibilities of the 
influence on students of the new impulse 
to the study of American history and the 
increased breadth of vision which this 
study must take on in the presence of so 
wide-ranging a collection. For any ade- 
quate study of this history the accumula- 

12 



tion of a vast mass of details is essential, 
for tke impressive thing about America is 
the high level of the average of citizen- 
ship and the way it is shot through and 
through with ideals and strong moral pur- 
pose. Far greater masses of population 
have here hitched their wagons to the stars 
than ever felt any relationship to the stars 
before. A large and increasing collec- 
tion on the history of the West, the region 
of the country where this peculiar dis- 
tinction of America is most strongly dis- 
played, will be a constant feeder of faith. 
* ^ * 
That the work of the Harvard Com- 
mission on Western History should spring 
from seed sowed in a memorial to Charles 
Elliott Perkins is eminently fitting, for he 
was a leader among the men who, born of 
New England ancestry, on the other side 
of the Alleghenies, devoted their lives to 
the building of new commonwealths and 
to the transformation of the prairies from 
feeding grounds for great herds of buifalo 
to farms and villages and humming cities 
populated by men from the East and the 
South and the countries across the sea. 
These builders of states knew that man- 
kind cannot live by bread alone, and the 
multiplication of schools and colleges and 

13 



the planting of churches were tangible 
witnesses to their faith in the intangible 
spirit. They were sound and energetic 
business men, and made money for them- 
selves and the stockholders they served, 
but their sense of the practical demands 
of life did not cloud the visions of the 
future empire they were helping to cre- 
ate. All through the states of the Central 
West the name of Mr. Perkins is still fra- 
grant with honor. It is a good thing for 
the University and for the young men 
who live and study in it to have the 
memorial of such a man form a part of 
the greater monument to the growth and 
the living aspirations of the West. 

Graduates throughout the country can 
be of the greatest aid to the Commission 
in its undertaking, for it desires to col- 
lect material of the most varied sort. It 
aims to gather not only books and pam- 
phlets containing descriptions of the West 
in the early days, but also reports of cor- 
porations and other business enterprises 
which were making investments in the 
AVest, old books of accounts, now stored 
away perhaps in attics and lofts, and es- 
pecially letters and old newspapers from 
every section of the West. Graduates are 

14 



strongly urged to bring any such material 
to the notice of the Commission, whether 
it is in their own possession or that of 
other people. Great masses of documents 
are constantly burned which would be in- 
valuable to future historians in their ef- 
forts to restore the lineaments of the 
past. 

In many cases where there are family 
papers or small collections of material the 
owners may be brought to see that this 
great collection is the most fitting place 
in which they can rest. A small collection, 
no matter how valuable, loses much of its 
value to scholars if it be isolated. Here 
will be a great memorial to the spirit and 
the ideals of the West which can be built 
up by a multitude of small collections, and 
the small collections will take on a new 
value and importance from the largeness 
of the whole enterprise. 



15 



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Sept Oct 1988 



